About Nick

Nick was born and raised in the Lion City, Singapore, which is wedged between western Indonesia and peninsula Malaysia. Finding few reasons to leave Singapore’s hot, humid weather and great food (though the Malaysians may claim otherwise), he completed his B.Eng. degree with Honors in Environmental Engineering in 2014 at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where he did research on graphene-based catalysts for water treatment. Malaysia’s persistent threat to cut off Singapore’s water supply motivated Nick to pursue a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering with a specialization in membrane distillation (MD) under the tutelage of Professor Rong Wang at the Singapore Membrane Technology Center, where he cruised through the next four years (just kidding!). This would not have been possible without the funding support from the NTU Research Scholarship and Johnson Matthey Studentship. His dissertation won the American Water Works Association’s First Place 2020 Academic Achievement Award for best doctoral dissertation. In 2019, after unashamedly sending out numerous unsolicited job applications, a job offer from the Coronell group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finally gave him a reason to leave the sunny island of Singapore and relocate to the Tar Heel State where he currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from contaminated drinking-water sources.

Nick’s research interests include novel surface-modification techniques, development of novel materials, material characterization, contaminants of emerging concern, membrane-foulant interactions, self-heating membranes and wetting reversal in MD, mass-transport phenomena, polymeric coatings, surface science, and membrane surface chemistries and structures. When not working on membranes or resins, Nick can usually be spotted on a treadmill in the gym.